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Kim Stanley Robinson's books are all pretty fantastic. I recommend the Red Mars trilogy as well as 2312. His vision of the future is exciting and optimistic, hi

Kim Stanley Robinson's books are all pretty fantastic. I recommend the Red Mars trilogy as well as 2312. His vision of the future is exciting and optimistic, his deep knowledge of science and technology topics is enlightening, and his writing ability and character creation are fun and imaginative. It's great stuff for any hard science fiction fans.

maaku 12y ago
Great books. Zero understanding of the singularity or transhumanist ideas though.
- swartkrans 12y ago
  Oh I think he gets those ideas, but as can be gathered from his characters, he doesn't think people will go for it. And the spacers in 2312 are pretty transhumanist I'd say.
  - maaku 12y ago
    I have not read 2312 yet, although it is on my list. As for most of his other works, he explores ideas of immortality and such, but only in the context of humans. He explores what happens in a society where humans live forever, without all our weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and quirks. He also presumes such biologically limited humans will remain the dominant species and their tribal power structures the mechanism effecting change. That makes for good storytelling when your audience is regular old humans. But not very accurate predictions.
aetherson 12y ago
I yield to no one in my appreciation for the Mars trilogy, but 2312 is a lazy, stupid book. Its world is incoherent -- the premise is that in 300 years of advance, in a solar system where Mars and Venus have both been terraformed in a timescale in under 250 years or so, where humanity has near-magical technology, the problems on earth are EXACTLY the same problems that an academic liberal like KSR thinks are the problems today (basically: global warming + the developing world is poor). Somehow, we can turn Venus into a pastoral world but we can't scrub a few trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere? Really? His thinking on every issue makes those plastic wading pools look deep. His treatment of economics in particular makes me think that he once heard someone describe economics, but only in a language he only partially understands. His proposed solutions range from the simplistic (really smart computers make the planned economies that he longs for right now more plausible -- novel) to the utterly insane (the way that we solve environmental catastrophe and poverty on earth is literally to air-drop animals into northern Canada). As a political novel, 2312 is deathly dull. Go to any college campus or most of the internet, and you can hear every concern KSR raises described in much greater nuance and detail, and reasonable attempts at much more convincing solutions thought up. As a science-fiction novel, 2312 reiterates the Mars trilogy without adding anything. But its true, breathtaking failure is in stitching together its (bad) political novel with its (rehearsed) science fiction novels, the terrible amalgamation making both components worse due to just how poorly the two sides fit. The science fiction part makes mockery of the political part -- these political problems simply do not make sense in that world. The political part drags the book off trap in the science fiction. It's really quite impressive how bad it is. There is a way to address poverty and environmental catastrophe in a technologically advanced future of terraforming. 2312's approach of just ham-handedly putting today's unaltered problems into a setting that is otherwise quite alien is not that way.
- sanoli 12y ago
  > the problems on earth are EXACTLY the same problems that an academic liberal like KSR thinks are the problems today (basically: global warming + the developing world is poor). Well, if you were to tell someone in 1714 that we had gone to the Moon, had robots on Mars, had eradicated smallpox and cured a bunch of other deadly stuff, had the internet on everyone's pockets, nuclear energy, etc, they probably wouldn't believe that at the same time we'd still have people living like they do in some parts of Africa.

maaku 12y ago

Great books. Zero understanding of the singularity or transhumanist ideas though.

swartkrans 12y ago
Oh I think he gets those ideas, but as can be gathered from his characters, he doesn't think people will go for it. And the spacers in 2312 are pretty transhumanist I'd say.
- maaku 12y ago
  I have not read 2312 yet, although it is on my list. As for most of his other works, he explores ideas of immortality and such, but only in the context of humans. He explores what happens in a society where humans live forever, without all our weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and quirks. He also presumes such biologically limited humans will remain the dominant species and their tribal power structures the mechanism effecting change. That makes for good storytelling when your audience is regular old humans. But not very accurate predictions.

aetherson 12y ago

I yield to no one in my appreciation for the Mars trilogy, but 2312 is a lazy, stupid book. Its world is incoherent -- the premise is that in 300 years of advance, in a solar system where Mars and Venus have both been terraformed in a timescale in under 250 years or so, where humanity has near-magical technology, the problems on earth are EXACTLY the same problems that an academic liberal like KSR thinks are the problems today (basically: global warming + the developing world is poor). Somehow, we can turn Venus into a pastoral world but we can't scrub a few trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere? Really? His thinking on every issue makes those plastic wading pools look deep. His treatment of economics in particular makes me think that he once heard someone describe economics, but only in a language he only partially understands. His proposed solutions range from the simplistic (really smart computers make the planned economies that he longs for right now more plausible -- novel) to the utterly insane (the way that we solve environmental catastrophe and poverty on earth is literally to air-drop animals into northern Canada). As a political novel, 2312 is deathly dull. Go to any college campus or most of the internet, and you can hear every concern KSR raises described in much greater nuance and detail, and reasonable attempts at much more convincing solutions thought up. As a science-fiction novel, 2312 reiterates the Mars trilogy without adding anything. But its true, breathtaking failure is in stitching together its (bad) political novel with its (rehearsed) science fiction novels, the terrible amalgamation making both components worse due to just how poorly the two sides fit. The science fiction part makes mockery of the political part -- these political problems simply do not make sense in that world. The political part drags the book off trap in the science fiction. It's really quite impressive how bad it is. There is a way to address poverty and environmental catastrophe in a technologically advanced future of terraforming. 2312's approach of just ham-handedly putting today's unaltered problems into a setting that is otherwise quite alien is not that way.

sanoli 12y ago
> the problems on earth are EXACTLY the same problems that an academic liberal like KSR thinks are the problems today (basically: global warming + the developing world is poor). Well, if you were to tell someone in 1714 that we had gone to the Moon, had robots on Mars, had eradicated smallpox and cured a bunch of other deadly stuff, had the internet on everyone's pockets, nuclear energy, etc, they probably wouldn't believe that at the same time we'd still have people living like they do in some parts of Africa.